A great day in atlanta: 2003-2013 before & beyond

It all started when...

Reminiscent of the iconic photograph A Great Day In Harlem, taken in August of 1958 by Art Kane, the A Great Day In Atlanta 10-year Anniversary photograph again marks history; deeming the individual and collective efforts of artists, organizers, spearheads and promoters as a collective movement, thus documenting the Atlanta Underground movement as a renaissance.  

The historic A Great Day In Atlanta project and photograph, spawned in December of 2002 while Atlanta-based producer and visionary Kemi Bennings sat in the company of artists from the Washington, DC underground community. As she sat, listened, contributed and absorbed, a common thread had niched itself out and began to weave its way into the Atlanta arts and music legacy. There sat a handful of dream makers, movers and shakers and believers in faith. Artists emerging like the days of the Harlem Renaissance, transcribing the “writing on the wall” into art and music and song. And, on March 30th, 2003, approximately 100 artists, singers, musicians, poets, filmmakers, producers, promoters and arts enthusiasts gathered on the steps of the AUC’s Robert W. Woodruff Library.

Seen through the eye of self-proclaimed photographic historian John Crooms, who has been capturing and chronicling Atlanta’s art and music scene since the late 80’s, A Great Day In Atlanta provides the platform to visually explore the Atlanta Arts Movement before and beyond as paralleled to “A Great Day In Harlem” as a renaissance; a time period where arts and music was amidst a blossoming and bourgeoning of another era of art-music fusion where various genres seemed to collide and exist. This project was the first of its kind in Atlanta, and received a Proclamation from the City of Atlanta.